Wow, I’ve never seen this before. Ran across a job listing for: Private Equity Analyst at a relatively large shop
Under Requirements, it specifically states: no MBA’s
And this is for an experienced hire with 2-4 years of investment experience
Obviously there are some salary implications behind that statement.
What is an MBA is willing to take a lower pay?
Agreed with bpdulog. Unlike hedge funds, an MBA (especially from a top school) is generally positively regarded in private equity. At the firm I worked at, which was a pretty large and global buyout shop, it was rare that someone would make it beyond the associate level without an MBA. This of course is quite different from what you might encounter on the hedge fund side, where funds generally value work experience more and don’t pay that much attention to business school (even though I think they should).
I’m going to disagree. I personally know a Wharton MBA grad that couldn’t get anything and literally ended up working for Bloomberg as a junior analyst making $60k. The listing doesn’t even distinguish between full/part time MBA’s.
2-4 years of experience is about right for someone who went back for a full-time and just graduated.
If I gave up $250k for a MBA, I would be a combination of pissed and disturbed if I saw this listing. Let’s face it, PE is a dream job for many MBA’s shooting to get into finance, and today, It’s a hiring-manager market. For an opportunity like that, I bet there are many new MBA’s from top schools willing to jump at it, even if it specified a low pay.
For the company to directly say “no MBA’s” in the listing itself and literally wiping all of them out, there’s something beyond just money. I will agree it is out of the norm to see this though.
But regardless, I bet we will never see a “no CFA candidates” requirement. Oops my bad, did I just start another MBA vs CFA debate?? XD
Dunno why this is so surprising…I think these postings are very common. I’ve seen a lot of PE firm postings for “pre-MBA associate” that want 2-4 yrs experience…
The $60K for a Wharton MBA as a Bloomberg grad is a sad story. I wonder if that person was just looking for a good buy-side role and couldn’t find one but still needed to do something to make ends meet…and then moved on as soon as he found something better. Any thoughts? What did Bloomberg think when they saw the Wharton grad applying for a $60K job? Did they have any skepticism about the guy’s qualifications and/or motives?
I think that “no MBA” thing is just a way for the HR person to be lazy. They are going to get hundreds of applications either way, so might as well list the typical candidate template that they have pictured in their head.
The $60k Wharton guy seems like an outlier. Or maybe the job market is just really bad. I don’t imagine that *all* Wharton graduates get the job they want.
Even pre-crisis, I believe private equity strongly distinguished between pre-MBA and post-MBA positions.
Is this to just drive the salary expectations low and still accept the MBA grads who apply for it? Or am I being too fictitious!
if what you said it’s true,then it’s a bad news for school students.
but i think your thought is quite common in some other companies.
This is just ridiculous to me. There must have been some extenuating circumstance for your Wharton MBA friend that took the $60K offer at Bloomberg. I’d like to know what that is. As a recent MBA graduate myself from one of those schools (maybe Wharton?!), I can say that there probably isn’t anyone that wouldn’t feel a loss of face to take a job like that. Also, seeing as how Bloomberg doesn’t show up on any of Wharton’s recent employment reports, the guy must have done it off the record, i.e. graduated without a job, accepted the role at Bloomberg and didn’t report it to career management.
While it’s not to say that some people graduate without jobs because their recruiting interests are very specialized or are looking for just-in-time hiring opportunities, the situation you’ve described with your friend is highly unusual and not representative of his classmates/peers.
CFA,MBAs,degrees and certificates are just driving licenses issued in controlled environments…it doesn’t mean you can drive at all on the mean streets…even Wharton grads.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’re a 2011 or 2012 graduate.
Wharton’s MBA class of 2009 (and 2010) got completely PUMMELED in terms of finding jobs; even moreso than the other M7 schools.
For foreign students that graduated Wharton in 2009, the choice often came down to either taking whatever U.S. job they could get their hands on, or getting kicked out of the country (and sent back to India etc) 90 days after graduation.
Wendy, your assessment sounds reasonable and correct. I hadn’t considered the situation that many of the international students face, and even though the climate for buy-side jobs today is still pretty rough, I guess it’s hard to imagine it being as bad as 2009-2010.
I would read this to mean that:
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The pay will be at a competitive rate for an undergrad, eg. $65,000
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The firm is not interested in hiring an MBA for the position, since any MBA would bolt as soon as a proper-MBA-salary job comes along.
I’ve seen plenty of jobs like this and most of them are in private equity. This posting (or the portion iteracom posted anyway) does not give much info, but most of the no-MBA listings I have seen specifically say they are looking for pre-MBA candidates, often with the expectation that they will work for two years before departing to b-school (that is VERY common on the PE side, not so much on the HF side). I wouldn’t necessarily read this as anti-MBA in the grand sense, though it’s weird that the post doesn’t specifically say why. And FWIW, there are far more MBA required jobs in pretty much all areas of finance than MBA not required jobs, let alone anti-MBA jobs. Hedge funds are possibly an exception and are pretty nichey, with large funds usually preferring an MBA and smaller funds usually flexible, with a possible anti-MBA bias at some funds. The fund I work for has an anti-everything bias it seems like, so it really depends on the founder.
I would rather read it as a poorly worded “pre-mba” job.
Finance job market is still pretty bad, althought not as bad as 2009-2010. My friends at wharton/booth/columbia really struggled with finding good finance gigs, especially buyside.
I doubt the hiring manager didn’t go through the job requirements and qualifications before it was posted. HR might have drafted it but the hiring manager usually takes a final look before.